More Than 15,000 Scientists Protest Kyoto Accord; Speak Out Against Global Warming Myth

More than 15,000 scientists, two-thirds with advanced academic degrees, have now signed a Petition against the climate accord concluded in Kyoto (Japan) in December 1997. The Petition (see text below) urges the US government to reject the Accord, which would force drastic cuts in energy use on the United States. This is in line with the Senate Resolution, approved by a 95-to-0 vote last July, which turns down any international agreement that damages the economy of the United States while exempting most of the world’s nations, including such major emerging economic powers as China, India, and Brazil.

In signing the Petition within a period of less than six weeks, the 15,000 basic and applied scientists — an unprecedented number for this kind of document — also expressed their profound skepticism about the science underlying the Kyoto Accord. The atmospheric data simply do not support the elaborate computer-driven climate models that are being cited by the United Nations and other promoters of the Accord as “proof” of a major future warming. The covering letter enclosed with the Petition, signed by Dr. Frederick Seitz, president emeritus of Rockefeller University and a past president of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, states it well:

“The treaty is, in our opinion, based upon flawed ideas. Research data on climate change do not show that human use of hydrocarbons is harmful. To the contrary, there is good evidence that increased atmospheric carbon dioxide is environmentally helpful.”

This freely expressed vote against the warming scare propaganda should be contrasted with the claimed “consensus of 2500 climate scientists” about global warming. This facile and oft-quoted assertion by the White House is a complete fabrication. The contributors and reviewers of the 1996 report by the

UN-sponsored Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) actually number less than 2000, and only a small fraction — who were never polled — can claim to be climate scientists. Many of those are known to be critical of the IPCC report and have now become signers of the Petition.

“The ‘silent majority’ of the scientific community has at last spoken out against the hype emanating from politicians and much of the media about a ‘warming catastrophe.’ The Petition reflects the frustration and disgust felt by working scientists, few of whom have been previously involved in the ongoing climate debate, about the misuse of science to promote a political agenda,” said Dr. Seitz.

“Scientists are understandably upset when they see $2 billion per year devoted to research on climate change, much it irrelevant and concerned only with imaginary consequences of a hypothetical warming — while other fields of science are starved. They are also appalled and angry that an increasing fraction of this research money is diverted into “community workshops,” thinly disguised brainwashing exercises to create public fears about climate catastrophes.”

The Petition drive was organized by Dr. Arthur Robinson, director of the Oregon Institute for Science and Medicine (Cave Junction, OR) and a vocal critic of the shaky science used to support the Kyoto Accord. It was staffed by volunteers and supported entirely by private donations, with no contributions from industry. The Petition mailing included a scientific summary, an editorial essay by Arthur and Zachary Robinson published in the Wall Street Journal (Dec. 4, 1997), and the covering letter by Dr. Seitz, holder of the National Medal of Science and board chairman of the George C. Marshall Institute (Washington, DC) and also of the Science & Environmental Policy Project (Fairfax, VA).

It was Dr. Seitz’ essay in the Wall Street Journal (A Major Deception on “Global Warming”, June 12, 1996), which first drew public attention to the textual “cleansing” of the UN scientific report that forms the basis for the Kyoto Accord. For details on the unannounced text changes and how they affected the sense of the IPCC report, click here.

The full text of the Petition follows.

“We urge the United States government to reject the global warming agreement that was written in Kyoto, Japan, in December 1997, and any other similar proposals. The proposed limits on greenhouse gases would harm the environment, hinder the advance of science and technology, and damage the health and welfare of mankind.

There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide, methane, or other greenhouse gases is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate. Moreover, there is substantial scientific evidence that increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide produce many beneficial effects upon the natural plant and animal environments of the Earth.”

“In 1996 the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change—the IPCC——released a document titled, “Summary for Policy Makers,” which supported the notion of global warming. Environmentalists crowed that 15,000 scientists had signed the document.

“However, the report was doctored without the knowledge of most of those 15,000 scientists, whose protests became so vocal that the lead authors backed off their conclusions, disavowing the document as “a political tract, not a scientific report.”

“In 1998, 17,000 scientists, six of whom are Nobel Laureates, signed the Oregon Petition, which declares, in part: “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of greenhouse gasses is causing or will, in the foreseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere and disruption of the Earth’s climate.

“Finally, in a paper in June of 2001, aptly titled, GLOBAL WARMING: The Press Gets It Wrong — our report doesn’t support the Kyoto treaty, Dr. Richard S. Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, wrote: ‘Science, in the public arena, is commonly used as a source of authority with which to bludgeon political opponents and propagandize uninformed citizens.’ ”

“Follows is the “Manhattan Declaration on Climate Change” (http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=37&Itemid=54) that was issued and endorsed March 4, 2008 in New York City (and which, naturally, made headlines around the globe—not). 197 of the endorsers are climatologists or scientists in other closely related fields. Approximately 500 of the endorsers are individuals—such as meteorologists, geologists, physicists, chemical & mining engineers, biologists and the like—whose education and/or professional backgrounds provide them with a basis for speaking intelligently about the science of planetary climate change.

“These endorsers were present to personally and publicly declare their endorsements or, if not present, made public in the media (such as it is) their endorsement of the Declaration.

‘We, the scientists and researchers in climate and related fields, economists, policymakers, and business leaders, assembled at Times Square, New York City, participating in the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change,

‘Resolving that scientific questions should be evaluated solely by the scientific method;

‘Affirming that global climate has always changed and always will, independent of the actions of humans, and that carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant but rather a necessity for all life;

‘Recognising that the causes and extent of recently observed climatic change are the subject of intense debates in the climate science community and that oft-repeated assertions of a supposed ‘consensus’ among climate experts are false;

‘Affirming that attempts by governments to legislate costly regulations on industry and individual citizens to encourage CO2 emission reduction will slow development while having no appreciable impact on the future trajectory of global climate change. Such policies will markedly diminish future prosperity and so reduce the ability of societies to adapt to inevitable climate change, thereby increasing, not decreasing, human suffering;

‘Noting that warmer weather is generally less harmful to life on Earth than colder:

‘Hereby declare:

‘That current plans to restrict anthropogenic CO2 emissions are a dangerous misallocation of intellectual capital and resources that should be dedicated to solving humanity’s real and serious problems.

‘That there is no convincing evidence that CO2 emissions from modern industrial activity has in the past, is now, or will in the future cause catastrophic climate change.

‘That attempts by governments to inflict taxes and costly regulations on industry and individual citizens with the aim of reducing emissions of CO2 will pointlessly curtail the prosperity of the West and progress of developing nations without affecting climate.

‘That adaptation as needed is massively more cost-effective than any attempted mitigation and that a focus on such mitigation will divert the attention and resources of governments away from addressing the real problems of their peoples.

‘That human-caused climate change is not a global crisis.

‘Now, therefore, we recommend—

‘That world leaders reject the views expressed by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change as well as popular, but misguided works such as “An Inconvenient Truth.”

‘That all taxes, regulations, and other interventions intended to reduce emissions of CO2 be abandoned forthwith.

‘Agreed at New York, 4 March 2008

‘The Declaration, with endorsers, is posted at the International Climate Science Coalition website: http://www.climatescienceinternational.org/. The ICSC consists of a scientific and a policy advisory board, with additional support coming from consulting scientific and policy advisers. All of whom, along with their professional bonafides, may be viewed here.’

“As for the genuine source of climate change, perhaps this Declaration—along with destroying the media’s carefully contrived consensus—will help frame the question in its proper light, namely:

“Does an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere cause an increase in planetary temps or do warming planetary temps cause an increase of CO2 in the atmosphere?

“Evidence, so far—a portion of it provided by some of the very endorsers of the Manhattan Declaration—overwhelmingly suggests the latter. The only question that may remain in some people’s minds is the source of such warming. Perhaps that 1,000-Earths-in-diameter nuclear furnace 93 million miles away? But, then, I’m no scientist; so that’s just a guess. Perhaps we should ask Al Gore. He’s not a scientist, but he plays one in real life.”

And this, from the site of Dr. Richard Muller–Department of Physics at the University of California at Berkeley, and Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, associated with the Institute for Nuclear and Particle Astrophysics–and contains the climate history of the Earth, covering the past 3,000,000-years (you’ll note that temps roughly 100,000, 300,000 & 400,000 years ago were significantly higher than today’s; and that temps back past 1,000,000 years were radically higher than today’s): http://muller.lbl.gov/pages/IceAgeBook/history_of_climate.html

Finally, there’s this, from a correspondence I had with Dr. Tamsin Edwards, Ph.D., MPhys, PhD(Manc), who advocated that scientists not take positions on political policy, an intriguing statement, coming 14-years after the IPCC’s claim of “consensus” on this issue amongst scientists and in light of recent news reports of a growing number of scientists–in the tens of thousands–taking a position *against* the hypothesis of global warming. Perhaps it was just coincidental.

This is me talking:

Recently it was discovered that millions of years ago, CO2 levels were higher than they are now, although the headline was worded thusly: “Atmospheric CO2 at highest levels in 3 million years” (http://americablog.com/2013/05/global-warming-heat-trapping-co2-concentration-passes-400-ppm-milestone.html). However, within the report one reads: “The level of the most important heat-trapping gas in the atmosphere, carbon dioxide, has passed a long-feared milestone, scientists reported Friday, reaching a concentration not seen on the earth for millions of years.”